I beat a retreat until lunch, in a Greek restaurant in the Dupont Circle area of Washington.

The proprietor is a friend and familiar who plays up to Hitchens’s Rabelaisian presence, automatically presenting him with a full tumbler of Johnnie Walker as they banter about the finer distinctions between halloumi and kasseri

Brad Pitt said not so long ago that he felt the best reportage/journalism (long format, anyway) was to be found in the sheafs of reports Human Rights Watch put out. (not magazines, true.)

a lot of young magazine writers these days (Dissensians among them) seem to have to flit from harbour to harbour (as w Oliver nailing the changing market ^), a bit of money for a 200 word capsule review here, something else from there for a longer think-piece, and so on.

a Jockey Slut staffer made a weak and pretty insulting attempt at humour over the phone to me once, i must say!

Good Journalism should be about looking at a tiny particular event or scene and using it to bounce off into a kind of universalism... I'd like to write but I don't really have a clue what about. Well I do but I get easily dissuaded by myself. How is it possible to have a career in journalism? I feel I could batter out a good piece about something if I had some sort of brief...but about what?

a lot of young magazine writers these days (Dissensians among them) seem to have to flit from harbour to harbour

Which is harder than having to write something good -- I often think these boys should give up and go into advertising or marketing...it's a heartless creativity but it's full of £££s and life is short and the world is large. And the only kind of reviews they get to write these days run the emotional and aesthetic spectrum of effusive praise <> disappointment. The Big Critical Assassination can no longer happen: there's no need and there's no space. No one is paying attention and there are too many opinions to ignore. This is why K-punk still labours in the shadows and you hear nothing from Penman: their world has disappeared.

I think it used to be called that, but it was plain 'LM' when I had a read of it. I think by that time they'd shifted from a straightforward leftist position to a more generally contrarian, libertarian or anti-establishment one, and some of the things they published could probably be considered pretty conservative ("neo-con" if you're George Monbiot!). I think I read about six issues before they went bankrupt after their disastrous libel case against ITN. There was some interesting stuff in it, all the same.

i used to love mags. meant a lot to me growing up. still got more piles of them than anyone really should do. the one i used to like the most as a 10/11 year old was sky. dont think many people talk about that now though lol. used to go smiths or borders and read as many mags as i could but havent done that in so long. doesnt feel that essential/necessary anymore. i might try and get back into that though.

bought sight and sound the other day (this doesnt feel as vital as it once did either, despite good content, seems like it needs more content, like a lot of music mags, and a lot of the reviews seemed a bit diffident), as well as adbusters for the first time - not sure what this is about exactly, bits of current affairs, some philosophy, but good design, if more pictures/artwork than words.

the believer looks good but is quite pricey. wax poetics i always want to read but it just looks too 'baggy'. i get little white lies which i like, but its always a special 'theme issue' (another common theme of many modern mags - prob in the absence of enough to fill it with?) centered around one particular film, which almost makes it an advertorial cos theres so much about that one particular film. but i like the love that goes into it, even if the writing is quite fanziney.

dont think ive bought a music mag in ages. i used to like fact more when it was a little mag than a website. not that theres anything wrong with the site, i just liked the compact paper version.

who in their right mind would want to write about pop music beyond the age of 30 anyway? (31 year old man employed by Observer Music Monthly sits down in front of three Sugababes to discuss current career patterns -- but what exactly happened to his life? Why is he not being flown to New York to uncover Jay Z's dark soul at a surprising tete-a-tete outside New Jersey?)

Seconded for Little White Lies and Prospect*, which I've been impressed with both times I bought it - thinking of taking a sub out to replace the Vanity fair one, which can't end a day too soon (no sooner did I buy it than they replaced all the long political articles I liked with bankers, fucking bankers every bastard month).

*esp in comparison to New Statesman, which I've bought once about 2 years ago and couldn't believe how boring it was (arts coverage excepted)

Seconded for Little White Lies and Prospect*, which I've been impressed with both times I bought it - thinking of taking a sub out to replace the Vanity fair one, which can't end a day too soon (no sooner did I buy it than they replaced all the long political articles I liked with bankers, fucking bankers every bastard month).

LOL.

i never knew LWL was a paper mag, i've read (and greatly enjoyed) the online version.

i also used to love picking up FACT in little record shops, was very exciting! still love the site, the best there is, IMO.

used to read Adbusters a lot back in the day via a uni library. can imagine it sparked a thousand epiphanies for exurban kids. although i haven't seen it, the cover identifying the Jewish heritage of Bush II/neo-con top-brass does sound foul, mind you.

Which is harder than having to write something good -- I often think these boys should give up and go into advertising or marketing...it's a heartless creativity but it's full of £££s and life is short and the world is large. And the only kind of reviews they get to write these days run the emotional and aesthetic spectrum of effusive praise <> disappointment. The Big Critical Assassination can no longer happen: there's no need and there's no space. No one is paying attention and there are too many opinions to ignore. This is why K-punk still labours in the shadows and you hear nothing from Penman: their world has disappeared.

Roffle, shoulda known there wouldn't be much love for LM around these parts. Their anti-environmental/pro-growth-at-any-price stance was quite worrying, I recall.

Well, it's also borne of a dislike of the RCP (the mag's political parent), which was for people who were too cool for the SWP, but too bourgeois sneery for anything constructive (like the Labour Party, obviously ). But if you're feeling nostalgic, you can still (?) find those people at Spiked and they make regular TV babble appearances in their Institute of Ideas guise.